Alumni Blog

Do Intercordia!

Brigette (Loran/Bosnia/2009) gives an “ode to a multi dimensional, intercultural, super-fun learning experience.”

What an incredible summer. I just spent three of the most challenging and stimulating months of my life in Bosnia through the Intercordia program. Naturally, now I’m about to encourage you to do the same.

Intercordia is a multi-dimensional program which enabled me to gain a multi-dimensional perspective of another culture. Through personal relationships enabled by living with a host family, pre-departure academic research, hands-on volunteer experience with a grassroots organization, and a reflective blogging component, Intercordia gave me an in-depth and nuanced understanding of a community completely different from my own. In my case, I experienced the culture, politics, and history of Gornji-Vakuf uskoplje, an ethnically divided, post-war, part Muslim, part Christian, formerly communist society.

As a third-year student of International Development, I appreciate Intercordia’s approach to volunteering abroad. Many trendy international development projects can be just another face of imperialism, and despite good intentions, can do communities more harm than good. Intercordia’s mandate is not to impose values on a community, but to learn from a community. As a young student with relatively limited skills who has so much to learn, I feel this was a great way to approach one of my first experiences in a developing country. While I see the urgency for change in the current, shameful state of our world, I believe for any kind of sustainable mitigation of issues such as poverty to happen, we must first understand them as complex and multi-faceted. For this, I don’t know a more all-encompassing approach than the Intercordia program.

Intercordia allowed me to reflect critically the complexities of humanitarianism, the peace-building process, and my role as a global citizen. In today’s globalized world of inter-cultural inter-dependence, I believe this is this is the perfect compliment to any academic program.

If I had it my way, every student would have the chance to participate in Intercordia.

-Brigette DePape